Strategy: Home Visiting/Family Support

Why This Matters:

The cornerstone of a healthy society is to assure that all families have access to the supportive services they want and need. Home Visiting helps us reach this goal by offering a variety of family-focused services to expectant parents and families with new babies and young children. Our Perinatal Health Outreach component serves as the gateway into the integrated home visiting system for Alameda County. Through this system, we seek to incorporate common quality standards, pool community resources and achieve greater outcomes. The integrated system also allows us to work in partnership with the various programs to conduct targeted outreach and determine a family's needs, thereby directing them to the appropriate service and ensuring greater levels of participation and success in meeting their expressed goals. For the 2017-2018 fiscal year, the Home Visiting/Family Support strategy supported 2,305 families in Alameda County. We continue to partner with ACPHD to provide trainings for home visiting professionals, collect data for evaluation and share workforce development best practices.

What We Are Doing:

Home Visiting and Family Support, in collaboration with Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD) and our community partners, is creating a more comprehensive home visiting and family support system of care for high-risk families. Our team of Perinatal Health Outreach Coordinators (PHOCs) helps expecting parents and parents with children under the age of 5 know what resources are available to them. They are a team of culturally responsive and knowledgeable professionals who have been linking families to support services since 2000. The PHOC’s work with families ranging from first time parents who want to learn about their baby’s growth, to experienced parents/caregivers who need help finding the right services. By meeting families where they are, listening to their needs and allowing them to be the decision makers, we assist families provide the best start in their child’s life.